


City of Orphans

by Pi (Rhea)



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-23
Updated: 2011-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-26 11:18:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282422
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhea/pseuds/Pi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Anri thinks about her children. h/c bingo prompt "orphans"</p>
            </blockquote>





	City of Orphans

Anri sometimes thinks about what would happen if she died. It's not a strange thought, living as they do in the city where anything could happen. Anri knows many people contemplate their deaths each day. In little ways and things, the ticking of a clock, a close call in a car, or the simple act of stepping out the door in the morning, or across the street. These things rarely bother Anri. She does not stop at overpasses to look out at rushing traffic beneath and think of the fragility of her own human body. She knows how fragile she is, how fragile they are. And a part of her loves them for it.

She loves them, all her children. But they are not hers. They are Saika's. And yet she's come to see them as they see her. Mother. Anri who believes she will never understand love, despite what she is learning to hold in her hands. Feelings between friends and boys with soft and loud smiles. Anri believes she doesn't understand love but she refuses to make them her children. To walk hand in hand across the street is both an act of a mother, and the act of a girlfriend.

Anri supposes someday she'll come to understand the latter. Sometimes Anri feels it when one of her children dies. The gangs of her city have calmed, but the streets are never free of the ring of violence. They come to her at night, a dark place in her dreams where the light of another soul used to be. An empty space in her web. It is how Anri understands the world. It is a place made up of her children, those that will be her children, those Saika loves and will love. And perhaps those Anri will love pure of shadows, blades, or secrets. And so Anri thinks about her death. Would her children notice? Puppets with the strings cut. They might regain their own minds. Or maybe, a million pierced hearts would cry out if hers failed to beat. Would they grieve her? Unknowing of the cause of their pain, only aware of the loss of a great love.

There are so many orphans in this city. Children far from home, grown up and old but never beyond the yearning for a mothers love. Anri finds them all with a thought and the touch of her own heart. She thinks this is why Izaya was jealous. He cannot love them all more than a part of her can. She ties them all together, all these runaways, come to the city for a better, brighter life. She holds them all close without using them as pawns. They come to her. They do not see her. She is a shy girl with too big breasts and a terrible secret. Her hair is flat and her shoes are scuffed and she's as parentless and far from home as they are. They do not see her, but they feel her fears, her hopes. She becomes a symbol in their minds. Something they have never seen, never hoped to believe in. Saika takes them all in and pours out a carnivorous affection for her orphaned city. Foreigners far from home, and businessmen living alone, school children with distant parents, and teenagers arriving and leaving by train, ledge, and the pathways of internet chat-rooms. Anri knows all of them because Saika loves all of them.

Anri loves only a few people. She loves a strange woman on a motor cycle who never speaks, but makes Anri feel less alone. Anri who tries never to think of her own parents revels in the feel of soft slippers and a warm smile she cannot see but feels on her skin. Anri loves the warmth of this family. She loves the strange man in his lab coats with his thick framed glasses and incorrigible ways. She loves her friends at school. She loves the nervous boy with his nervous hands and soft blushes. She loves the vibrant boy with his bright hair and bright voice. Saika loves them too but Anri loves them first. They have parents, and they have run away, and they have homes, and they don't know where they live. But they're all here, together. Anri holds that deep in her chest. A sense of home, a sense of family. A sense of love. And here in a city of runaways, and orphans she has found it with a celtic legend, a backstreet doctor and two ex-gang leaders. Anri loves her fairytale.


End file.
